Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Data-Based Decision Making In School Counseling: Utilizing Multiple Single-Case Indicators To Evaluate Interventions, Ryan J. Mcgill, Kelly S. Kennedy, Randy T. Busse

Education Faculty Articles and Research

As the field of professional school counseling continues to move toward a data-based decision making model of service delivery, there is a need for dissemination of best practice methods for evaluating whether school-based counseling interventions are effective. In that vein, the purpose of this article is to review several methods of data-based decision making within a single-case outcome evaluation model, as well as their potential applications for school counseling interventions. To aid practitioners, the potential use of these methods is demonstrated in a case example and accompanying graphic displays.

Implementation And Evaluation Of A Pilot Training To Improve Transgender Competency Among Medical Staff In An Urban Clinic, Corina Lelutiu-Weinberger, Paula Pollard-Thomas, William Pagano, Nathan Levitt, Evelyn I. Lopez, Sarit A. Golub, Asa E. Radix

Publications and Research

Purpose: Transgender individuals (TGI), who identify their gender as different from their sex assigned at birth, continue facing widespread discrimination and mistreatment within the healthcare system. Providers often lack expertise in adequate transgender (TG) care due to limited specialized training. In response to these inadequacies, and to increase evidence-based interventions effecting TG-affirmative healthcare, we implemented and evaluated a structural-level intervention in the form of a comprehensive Provider Training Program (PTP) in TG health within a New York City-based outpatient clinic serving primarily individuals of color and of low socioeconomic status. This pilot intervention aimed to increase medical staff knowledge of …

Evaluating A Skills-Based Approach To Bullying Prevention, Rebecca Pister

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In the following paper, I present an evaluation of the bullying prevention program designed and delivered by the John Howard Society of Waterloo-Wellington (JHS WW). A mixed-methods approach involving both quantitative and qualitative data collection was used to assess the program impacts on children receiving the primary stream of the program (Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 3), and the junior stream of the program (Grades 4 through 6). A case study was also conducted to assess the impacts of the program one year after program delivery and after two consecutive years of programming. Finally, all school staff members were invited to respond …

Evaluating Sexual Assault Prevention Training Programs For College Women, Eliza S. Mcmanus

Dissertations

Sexual victimization is a frequent and concerning problem for college women. It is estimated that college women are three times more likely to experience sexual assault than women in the general population. Additionally, women with a history of unwanted sexual experiences are at greater risk for future sexual victimization than women without such histories. For these reasons, the examination of college-based sexual assault prevention programs is important given the high rates of unwanted sexual experiences and subsequent negative mental health consequences. Furthermore, the lack of effective skills-based sexual assault prevention programs on college campuses is an important issue to address. …

How Do Musicians Evaluate Their Musical Performances? The Impact Of Positive And Negative Information From Normative, Ipsative, And Expectation Standards, Ellen-Ge Denton, William F. Chaplin

Publications and Research

The purpose of the research reported in this article was to test two hypotheses about how musicians evaluate their musical performances. The first hypothesis was that musicians’ self-evaluations would be more influenced by their expectations and their past performances than by comparisons to the performances of other musicians. The second hypothesis was that musicians would exhibit an ‘adaptive evaluational style’ by showing more sensitivity to positive feedback than to negative feedback. We used the Experimental Evaluational Styles Questionnaire (Goolsby & Chaplin, 1988) in a sample of 78 music performance students (43 men and 35 women) to test these hypotheses, and …

On Getting Better And Working Hard: Using Improvement As A Heuristic For Judging Effort, Monica El Gamal

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

There is a strong conceptual association between improvement and effort. Therefore, we propose that people tend to use improvement as a heuristic for judging effort in others. Hence, they would perceive greater effort in improved performance records than in non-improved records with superior overall performance. To examine whether people use improvement as a heuristic for effort, we compared judgments of effort investments and trait effort in improved and consistently-strong performance profiles with equivalent recent performance. Across six empirical studies, participants thought that those with improved profiles exerted more effort and were more hardworking than those with consistently-strong profiles, and this …

An Evaluation Of Mental Health And Methadone: Anxiety, Depression, And Drug Use, Gursimran Khahera

Master's Projects and Capstones

As a part of the Masters of Science in Behavioral Health field placement, an evaluation was conducted of the integrated treatment plan in mental health and substance abuse at Bay Area Addiction Research and Treatment (BAART) programs. The goal of the BAART programs are to provide comprehensive mental health and substance abuse outpatient recovery services, as well as on-site primary health care services for substance users, mainly opioid use. There is a link between increased substance abuse and increased rates of depression and anxiety. These disorders use the same neuro chemical pathway and are highly codependent upon one another. Because …

Don’T Be Such A Downer: Using Positive Psychology To Enhance The Value Of Negative Feedback, Allison L. O'Malley, Jane B. Gregory

Alison L. O'Malley

Effective developmental feedback promotes a balanced and authentic view of employees' current state, thereby addressing strengths and weaknesses of employees. The authors address how organizations' increased emphasis on positivity can be reconciled with the delivery of negative feedback. Drawing on principles from positive psychology, the authors outline strategies managers can implement to increase the likelihood that negative feedback interventions will yield improved performance while promoting employee well-being.

Successive Study Of Diversity Conference Evaluations Of Presenters By Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation, And Disability, Autumn M. Palmer, Christine M. Wilson, Judith Puncochar

Conference Presentations

A Midwestern university’s annual diversity conference hosts about 1,500 attendees from a campus of 9,000 students. Using a successive independent samples design, a series of cross-sectional surveys were conducted to answer the research question, how does a presenter’s race, gender, and ability/disability affect participant responses on conference evaluations. A review of the literature has determined that our research represents the largest and longest empirical study of a higher education diversity conference in the United States. The research is a comparative study of evaluation trends of conference attendees toward diversity conference presenters based on race, gender, and disability over eight years …

Ethnic Names, Resumes, And Occupational Stereotypes: Will D'Money Get The Job?, Tony Matthew Carthen

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

King, Madera, Hebl, and Knight (2006) found evidence that race-typed names can have significant influence on the evaluation of resumes. Specifically, they found significant differences between Asian, Hispanic, Black and White-sounding names. They also found that occupational stereotypes covaried the relationship between names and evaluation. The current study expanded on their research by manipulating race with new groups (White, Asian Indian, Nigerian, Muslim, and Non-traditional Black-sounding names), manipulating the quality of the resume (low, high), and by considering occupational stereotypes (low-status, high-status) as an explanatory mechanism. Participants who have claimed hiring experience (N=170) from several fields read a fictitious resume, …

Situational Context, Philosophical Belief, And Moral Constructs: The Multifaceted Nature Of Moral Judgment, Jessie Huang

CMC Senior Theses

Recent studies have shown that different free will beliefs affect moral behavior. The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether different free will beliefs also influence moral judgment. College students (N = 56) were randomly assigned to one of three framing manipulations: free will, determinism, or neutral. They then read three morally questionable scenarios that differed by situational context. Following each scenario, participants completed a moral judgment questionnaire that measured four moral constructs: moral evaluation, moral responsibility, justification, and punishment. Finally, participants completed a Free Will & Determinism Questionnaire (FWD-Q) that measured their lay beliefs in free …

Involvement Of Principals In Hiring, Professional Development, And Evaluation Of Paraeducators, Jordan T. Hix

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has found paraeducators do not receive adequate training (Giangreco,Broer, & Edelman, 2002), and are often infrequently evaluated –yearly or less often (Mueller, 2002; Morgan, Ashbaker, & Young, 2001). Little is known about principals' practices relative to paraeducator training, and evaluation. To investigate these topics, a survey was distributed to principals that worked in a large suburban/rural school district in the western United States. Fifty-eight participants completed surveys at a district principals meeting. The results of the study indicated a large majority of principals (78.95% for Title 1 paraeducators, 86.21% for special education paraeducators, and 75.86 for others) hired …

Predicting Career Outcome Measures Using An Internship Evaluation Instrument: The Internship Profiling Questionnaire, Christopher Terao Silva

Theses and Dissertations

Internships have become an integral part of post-secondary education, while also serving as a means for students to distinguish themselves as job candidates. Although internship programs have formally been in place for over a hundred years, surprisingly little research has been done into the topic, even though more than three out of four students participate in at least one internship before they graduate college. The purpose of this study is to develop and test an internship evaluation tool that will help educators distinguish the high quality internship opportunities from low quality ones. Based on management profiling questionnaires that became popular …

The Varieties Of Individual Engagement (Vie) Scales: Confirmatory Factor Analyses Across Two Samples And Contexts, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Myiah J. Hutchens, Peter Muhlberger, Shiyuan Wang, Rebecca Harris, Jayme Neiman, Alan Tomkins

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

The field of public engagement, participation and deliberation is fraught with conflicting results that are difficult to interpret due to the very different methods and measures used. Theory advancement and consistent operationalization and assessment of key public deliberation and engagement variables will benefit considerably from standardized measures of constructs and the ability to compare across studies. In this article, drawing from social and educational psychology, we describe the theoretical bases for scales assessing eight varieties of participant engagement that may be experienced during participation activities: Active learning, conscientious, uninterested, creative, open-minded, closed-minded, angry, and social engagement. We describe our development …

The Independence Of Burnout And Engagement: Incremental Predictive Validity And Construct Reappraisal As Different Combinations Of The Same Components (Energy And Evaluation), Joe Choi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present investigation was conducted in response to recent concerns regarding the redundancy/independence of two related constructs in I/O Psychology: Burnout and engagement. Using students in an academic context, I first addressed this issue by investigating the incremental validity of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) over the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and vice versa in the prediction of six criterion variables (academic performance, physical ill-being, positive affect, negative affect, subjective experience of growth, eudaimonic well-being) in a sample of undergraduate students. Contrary to the recent meta-analysis by Cole, Walter, Bedeian, and O’Boyle (2012), I did not find evidence for …

A Qualitative Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of A Mental Skills Training Program For Youth Athletes, Lee-Ann Sharp, Jennifer Cumming, Charlotte Woodcock, Mark J.G. Holland, Jennifer Cumming, Joan L. Duda

Jennifer Cumming

The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the effectiveness of a mental skills training (MST) program for male youth elite rugby athletes. Three focus groups were held with 21 under-16 male rugby athletes and four male coaches involved in the MST program to examine the quality of service delivery, athlete responses to the MST program, the mental qualities used by athletes, and its perceived influence on athlete performance. Following inductive-deductive content analysis, 40 subcategories and 16 categories emerged. Participants believed the MST program to be an interactive, well-planned program that increased athlete understanding of MST methods and awareness of …

An Evaluation Of A Middle School's Bully Prevention Program, Jennifer Lynn Frazier

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study examines the effectiveness of a positive behavior support intervention program on the behavior of students in a middle school in a rural county in southern West Virginia. The study used a Pretest-Intervention-Posttest design using a single group of subjects across the span of four academic school years. The researcher measured the frequency of Office Discipline Referrals (ODR’s) pre and post intervention to determine if the intervention program was effective in improving bullying behavior. Data were analyzed using the Chi Square statistic. Results indicated an increase in total ODR’s post-intervention.

Furious Activity Vs. Understanding: How Much Expertise Is Needed To Evaluate Creative Work?, Learning Research Institute, John Baer, David H. Cropley, Roni Reiter-Palmon

Psychology Faculty Publications

What is the role of expertise in evaluating creative products? Novices and experts do not assess creativity similarly, indicating domain-specific knowledge’s role in judging creativity. We describe two studies that examined how quasi-experts (people who have more experience in a domain than novices but also lack recognized standing as experts) compared to novices and experts in rating creative work. In Study One, we compared different types of quasi-experts with novices and experts in rating short stories. In Study Two, we compared experts, quasi-experts, and novices in evaluating an engineering product (a mousetrap design). Quasi-experts (regardless of type) seemed to be …

An Analysis Of The Re-Education Philosophy And The Applicability To Individual And Group Therapy, Psychoeducation And Skills, Sarah Manthei

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

An evaluation was conducted of the Re-Education philosophy, current practices of individual and group therapy, skills training, and psychoeducation for Level IV special education students diagnosed with an emotional behavioral disorder and/or mental health diagnosis. An assessment of current evidenced based practices for school-based mental health services was integrated. This provided the foundation for recommendations that are congruent with the Re-Education philosophy and for an evaluation tool to measure student success in learning and comprehending the skills curriculums.

An Analysis Of Treatment Retention And Attrition In An Australian Therapeutic Community For Substance Abuse Treatment, Mark Robert Porter

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Research undertaken in the last three decades has consistently reported that the length of time spent in inpatient and outpatient alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment programs predicts treatment success (De Leon, Melnick, Kressel, & Jainchill, 1994; Hubbard, Craddock, & Anderson, 2003; Simpson, Joe, Fletcher, Hubbard, & Anglin, 1999). However, treatment attrition rates are high and present a major problem for improving treatment outcomes. Various factors that have been reportedly associated with increased AOD treatment attrition rates include being female, younger clients, clients using methamphetamines, and clients with elevated psychopathology scores. The aim of this thesis is to improve understanding …

An Evaluation Of Social Capital's Effect On Depression Among Adolescents, Ezechukwu Awgu

Dissertations

Mental illness has been described as a “global burden of disease,” and depression accounts for a large part of the burden (Aslund, Starrin, Nilsson, 2010). In 2009, 35.7 percent of the adolescent population in the United States who reported past-year symptoms of a major depressive episode, for example, feelings of sadness, discouragement, loss of feelings of self-worth, and loss of interest in social activities, also used illicit drugs including marijuana, inhalants, hallucinogens, cocaine, heroin, and prescription-type psychotherapeutics for non-medical purposes (SAMHSA, 2009, APA, 1994). Additionally, substance abuse due to alcoholism was among the major causes of death for adolescents aged …

A Comparison Of The Effect Of In-Street Pedestrian Signs Alone, The Rectangular Rapid-Flashing Beacon Alone And Both Together On Yielding Behavior, Hana Sahar Manal

Masters Theses

This study examined the effectiveness of a rectangular rapid-flashing beacon (RRFB) alone, in-street signs alone, and the RRFB plus in-street sign together on motorist yielding to pedestrians. Participants consisted of drivers in Oakland County, Michigan. Pedestrians were confederate data collectors. The target behavior was driver yielding. The two treatments utilized were the RRFB and the instreet sign. A reversal design was used in which the first set of conditions included baseline, the RRFB alone, two in-street signs alone and the combination of the two in-street signs with the RRFB. All of the treatments affected yielding in the predicted direction, except …

Theory Building Through Praxis Discourse: A Theory- And Practice-Informed Model Of Transformative Participatory Evaluation, Michael Allen Harnar

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Stakeholder participation in evaluation, where the evaluator engages stakeholders in the process, is prevalent in evaluation practice and is an important focus of evaluation research. Cousins and Whitmore proposed a bifurcation of participatory evaluation into the two streams of transformative participatory and practical participatory evaluation (T-PE and P-PE respectively). T-PE stems from a social justice perspective and P-PE has more of a use orientation. T-PE is an underdeveloped evaluation theory with relatively low operational specificity. Case examples provide some understanding of it in practice, but comprehensive empirical support is still forthcoming. This study aims to develop a greater understanding of …

Training Evaluation In Virtual Worlds: Development Of A Model, Richard N. Landers, Rachel C. Callan

Psychology Faculty Publications

Many organizations have adopted virtual worlds (VWs) as a setting for training programs; however, research on appropriate evaluation of training in this new setting is incomplete. In this article, we address this gap by first exploring the unique issues relevant to evaluation faced by training designers working in VWs. At the macro-organizational level, the primary issue faced is an organizational culture unreceptive to or otherwise skeptical of VWs. At the micro-organizational level, two major issues are identified: individual trainees unreceptive to VWs and general lack of experience navigating VWs. All three of these challenges and their interrelationships may lead to …

Testing Mediated Effects Of A Sex Education Program On Youth Sexual Activity, Paul James Birch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Empirical investigations have identified hundreds of factors that predict whether youth engage in sexual activity (YSA). To promote optimal health and the avoidance of unhealthy or problematic outcomes that can result from YSA, sex education programs have been extensively developed and evaluated. Many evaluations have identified the effect of the program on immediate outcomes such as attitudes and intentions, others have examined subsequent behavioral and health outcomes, and some have done both. The purpose of this study was to extend the evaluation literature by testing a mediated effects model. A sex education program was found to have significant immediate effects …

Don’T Be Such A Downer: Using Positive Psychology To Enhance The Value Of Negative Feedback, Allison L. O'Malley, Jane B. Gregory

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Effective developmental feedback promotes a balanced and authentic view of employees' current state, thereby addressing strengths and weaknesses of employees. The authors address how organizations' increased emphasis on positivity can be reconciled with the delivery of negative feedback. Drawing on principles from positive psychology, the authors outline strategies managers can implement to increase the likelihood that negative feedback interventions will yield improved performance while promoting employee well-being.

Attitudes, William A. Cunningham, Ingrid J. Haas, Andrew Jahn

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

This chapter reviews social neuroscience research that links social psychological attitudes and evaluative processes to their presumed neural bases. The chapter is organized into four parts. The first section discusses how attitude representations are transformed into evaluative states that can be used to guide thought and action. The next two sections address the related processes of attitude learning and change. The final section discusses applications of these concepts for the study of prejudice and political behavior.

A Delphi Study Regarding Assessment Of Intelligence In The Presence Of Autism, Sara Spencer

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research has indicated children with autistic disorder often demonstrate below average intelligence. Others have suggested intelligence of the autistic population has been underestimated. A gap in the current literature reflects the need to examine the accuracy of assessment of intelligence of children with autistic disorder. The research questions underlying this study addressed tools professionals use to assess intelligence of children with autistic disorder, how tools are selected, the level of confidence in the accuracy of results, and what level of consensus exists among experts. This Delphi study used a panel of 20 autistic disorder experts and 3 rounds of surveys …

Emotions At Work: What Do People Feel And How Should We Measure It?, Cynthia D. Fisher

Cynthia D. Fisher

Affect at work is of increasing interest to organisational researchers. Prior research on felt affect at work has focused almost exclusively on mood rather than emotion. As yet we have little knowledge about which emotions are felt or how frequently they are felt in the workplace, or of what their causes or consequences might be. There has not even been an instrument available for measuring emotion at work. This paper reports on a preliminary study designed as a lead-in to further research on emotion at work. One hundred and sixteen people reported on the frequency with which they had experienced …

Consulting And Evaluation With Nonprofit And Community-Based Organizations, Judah J. Viola, Susan D. Mcmahon

Judah J. Viola, Ph.D.